Yesterday Bethesda launched Fallout 76's brand new subscription service, Fallout 1st. But early reports from initial subscribers claim that launch hasn't gone smoothly.
One of the core features of the Fallout 1st subscription service is access to what Bethesda calls Private Worlds. These Private Worlds are supposed to be secluded servers where Fallout 1st subscribers can play with their friends without interruption, but it sounds like they've been nothing but trouble.
The first, and largest issue, is that Private Worlds aren't necessarily wholly private at the moment. Players are reporting that instead of a private world creating a new, fresh instance of the Fallout 76 world, players are instead inheriting instances of the world from other players. In other words, one subscriber could finish up a quest with their friends and log off for the night, only for another subscriber and their friends to log into the same world and find portions of it looted or littered with dead NPCs.
Subscription worlds are also seemingly not as private as some players want. Fallout 76 players are reporting that they'll log onto their private server and then invite a couple friends, only for people the randomly join as they please. Apparently non-subscribers who see someone on their friends list in a server are able to join those servers with a click, whether the subscriber wants them there or not. Having this option off by default seems preferable, though a toggle would certainly be best.
Another big issue, which is more of a bug than poor design, has to do with the new Scrapbox feature. Scrapboxes are also a feature addition that comes with a Fallout 1st subscription. They're storage units that allow subscribers to place an endless amount of crafting materials into them. However, there are reports that subscribers using Scrapboxes in Private Worlds are having all of their scrap disappear.
The major issue with all of these bugs and errors isn't that they exist, but rather they're part of a paid service that Fallout 76 players have already paid upfront for. It's unclear if Bethesda didn't adequately test the subscription, but that wouldn't necessarily be surprising given the number of problems Fallout 76 has had since launch. Hopefully, Bethesda is able to address these issues quickly so that Fallout 1st subscribers can feel fulfilled with their purchases.
Fallout 76 is available now on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
Source: Forbes